The Eslinger blog - live from ADFEST

Yesterday was a push to the finish line on the Cyber Lotus jury here at ADFEST, which means that all heads were down for five hours solid from early morning. There was lots of checking and double checking of banners, sites, mobile, games and virals to make sure that our first, fast impressions on day one were correct.

After a short break in the afternoon, we had a shortlist. And it was short indeed. The jury has been diligent, stuck the bar up high and judged the work at that level. Some might even say tough, but in a good way. I would argue that when you put people like this jury together to evaluate interactive work, they come from a background that has lived and breathed interactive thinking their whole lives.

This jury knows what to look for, they see lots of great work all the time because of who they are and what they do all day long and they know a techie trick from a great idea. After a round of working through the shortlist and rescuing a few gems that got missed in round one, we narrowed down a finalists list and broke for the day. The work that has come through to the end feels right and tomorrow is the last day. That's when the metal gets decided and the hard work of ADFEST finishes for the Cyber Lotus Jury for 2008.